Board of Directors
GORDON M. AAMOTH, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Aamoth is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Robina Foundation. A personal friend and physician of James H. Binger, founder of the Robina Foundation, Dr. Aamoth has served as a Director and Officer since the Foundation’s inception in June 2004.
Dr. Aamoth grew up in North Dakota and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colorado College. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of North Dakota and his MD from Northwestern University. His residency was completed at the University of California, San Francisco. Gordon practiced orthopedic surgery and taught at the University of Minnesota for thirty-four years. During that period he served on the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery Board of Directors and the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery, holding the position of President in 2001 and 2002. He also served on the Abbott Northwestern Hospital Board, and was President of its medical staff.
Dr. Aamoth has held volunteer positions with numerous other nonprofit boards prior to joining the Robina Foundation.
THOMAS M. CROSBY, JR., Vice President
Tom Crosby has been a partner at Faegre & Benson LLP, an international law firm based in Minneapolis, since 1972. Tom has served as Chair of the Firm’s Management Committee and in other administrative positions within the Firm.
Mr. Crosby has a broad-based transactional practice which has included general corporate counsel, private placements, public securities offerings, and mergers and acquisitions. His current emphasis is on real estate, nonprofit organizations and estate planning.
Tom has also served on and chaired the governing boards of the Greater Twin Cities United Way, The Walker Art Center, The Minnesota Orchestral Association and Abbott-Northwestern Hospital. Tom has been a member of the Medina City Council and is presently mayor.
Presently Mr. Crosby serves on the advisory board of Investment Company of America, and a community bank in suburban Minneapolis. He is active as trustee to several private foundations including the Robina Foundation.
He graduated from Yale University in 1960, spent two years on active duty in the U.S. Navy and graduated from the Yale Law School in 1965.
H. PETER KAROFF
H. Peter Karoff is chairman and founder of The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI), a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 that promotes philanthropy. TPI designs, manages, and evaluates philanthropic programs for individuals, families, corporations, and foundations. TPI’s goal is to help donors to invest in their own values, communities and societies for maximum impact
Mr. Karoff was President of TPI from 1989 to 2002. For 25 years, prior to founding TPI, Peter was in the insurance and real estate businesses. He has been on the board of more than 30 nonprofit organizations, including Blackside Productions, producer of the PBS series, The Eyes on the Prize, Massachusetts Association of Mental Health, Roxbury Development Corporation, New England Foundation for the Arts, and Business Executives for National Security. Current board affiliations in addition to TPI include: The Synergos Institute, Management Sciences for Health, Gerald and Henrietta Rauenhorst Foundation, Janey Fund, Elm Foundation, Mediators Foundation, St. Botolph Foundation, Massachusetts Business Roundtable, WGBH Educational Foundation, the National Leadership Council of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University where he also has served as a Senior Fellow.
Peter frequently speaks and writes on philanthropic and social issues and is the author of The World We Want – new dimensions in philanthropy and social change, (AltaMira Press - 2007) and editor of Just Money – A Critique of Contemporary American Philanthropy, (TPI Editions - 2004.) Peter’s poetry has been published and anthologized. A graduate of Brandeis University (1959), Peter earned an MFA from Columbia University (1988), and received an Honorary Degree Doctor of Humane Letters from Lesley University (2002). He was made a Fellow of the McDowell Colony in 1989 and in 2006 became a Purpose Prize Fellow.
LOIS QUAM, Treasurer
Lois Quam is Head of Strategic Investments, Green Economy & Health, at Piper Jaffray, a senior post responsible for the development of new business opportunities in the emerging green economy and health care sectors.
As a native of rural southwestern Minnesota, Lois brings business leadership to areas of great national and social challenge. For nearly two decades, she focused on improving health care access and affordability. In 2007, Quam’s concern about the warming climate, led her to leave a position as a top office of a Fortune 50 company to help build the green economy.
Quam chaired the Minnesota Health Care Access Commission, which made the case for new legislation that brought health insurance to tens of thousands of Minnesotans, resulting in the lowest uninsured rate in the country. She also served as a senior advisor, with a particular focus on rural areas, to Hillary Clinton’s task force on health care reform. Quam has also worked with Will Steger, the polar explorer and is a senior advisor to the Will Steger Foundation.
Quam earned a master’s degree in philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She graduated magna cum laude from Macalester College, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and is a recipient of the college’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
Quam serves on the Board of Trustees for Macalester College and the University of Minnesota Foundation, the Board of Directors for General Mills and the National Wildlife Foundation, and the Advisory Boards for the Will Steger Foundation and the George C. Marshall Foundation.
STEVEN A. SCHROEDER, MD, Secretary
Dr. Schroeder is Distinguished Professor of Health and Health Care, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, where he also heads the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center. The Center, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Legacy Foundation, works with leaders of more than 20 American health professional organizations and health care institutions to increase the cessation rate for smokers. It has expanded the types of clinician groups that support cessation, developed an alternative cessation message (Ask, Advise, Refer), and created new ways to market toll-free telephone quit lines.
Between 1990 and 2002, Dr. Schroeder was President and CEO, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. During that time the Foundation made grant expenditures of almost $4 billion in pursuit of its mission of improving the health and health care of the American people. It developed new programs in substance abuse prevention and treatment, care at the end of life, and health insurance expansion for children, among others.
Dr. Schroeder graduated with honors from Stanford University and Harvard Medical School, and trained in internal medicine at the Harvard Medical Service of Boston City Hospital and in epidemiology as an EIS Officer of the CDC. He held faculty appointments at Harvard, George Washington, and UCSF. At both George Washington and UCSF he was founding medical director of a university-sponsored HMO, and at UCSF he founded its division of general internal medicine.
He has published extensively in the fields of clinical medicine, health care financing and organization, prevention, public health, the work force, and tobacco control. He currently serves as chairman of the International Advisory Committee of the Ben Gurion School of Medicine, is a member of the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine, a director of the James Irvine Foundation, the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, and the Robina Foundation. He formerly chaired the American Legacy Foundation, was a Council member of the Institute of Medicine, an Overseer of Harvard, and President, the Harvard Medical Alumni Association. He has six honorary doctoral degrees and numerous awards. Schroeder lives in Tiburon, California with his wife Sally, a retired schoolteacher. Their two sons are physicians, one a cardiologist and one a pediatrician. Steve and Sally have two granddaughters.
EDSON SPENCER, Director Emeritus
Edson W. Spencer was born in 1926 in Chicago. He was an officer in the U. S. Naval Reserve, has degrees from Williams College and Oxford University, where he spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar.
Mr. Spencer worked for Sears Roebuck in Venezuela, and joined Honeywell in 1954. He served five years as Far East regional manager in Tokyo, and subsequently as President, Chairman and, for 13 years, Chief Executive Officer. He retired from Honeywell and its Board in 1988.
Mr. Spencer was a founder of the Yellowstone National Park Foundation and serves on its Advisory Council. He serves on the National Advisory Council of the National Parks Conservation Association. He is a former Chairman of the Ford Foundation, the Mayo Foundation, and Carleton College. He served as Vice Chair and Investment Committee Chair of the Minneapolis Community Foundation. He has served on the International Advisory Councils of Chase Bank, Robert Bosch in Germany, and NEC in Japan, and on the Boards of Directors of International Harvester, Norwest Bancorporation, CBS, and Boise Cascade.
Mr. Spencer has served on and chaired a number of commissions and committees dealing with U.S.–Japan relations. He has also served as advisor to two Governors of Minnesota on higher education policy, and as chair of the Advisory Board of the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Council on Foreign Relations.